I wanted to discuss the poetic imagery a bit to have the sentence flow more naturally.

Ok.. So the imagery is that the 화자 was running (in the race.. Of.. Life, i guess), but stumbled across a little rock and fell and hurt herself. And then starts the line, “Despite it, I will stand, take a deep breath, smile and keep walking forward”.

Like the other person suggested, in this situation it’s not merely breathing, but “breathing in”, as in, you know there iwll have harder things coming in life, so you are stocking up on resources. Similar to “이를 악물고”, but softter nuance.
“그럼에도 불구하고 나는 일어나. 천천히 숨을 들이쉬고”

Then “천천히 숨을 들이쉬고 미소 짓고” , there is nothing wroing with it, but rhythm wise it’s a bit off, it would feel more balanced to lengthen “미소 짓고” but I can’t think of something appropriate for that purpose for the moment.

Then the last part “앞으로 전진해” is not quite on point with the rest of the imagery/situation, because 전진해 is used often in military contexts, and even if not military, it gives the imagery oif someone walking under heavy rain/opposite direction wind, clenching teeth, and barely walking one step at a time using up all their energy.. Is what 전진하다 invokes when used with the rest of words.

Why? What are we gonna do?
For fun! Not sure what we'll do, but over a couple audio chat sessions we'll try to find an easy activity in which everyone can participate and can help us practice our speaking and listening skills for each our our respective learning languages.

How does it work?
It's group audio chat. Follow the instructions on the right, then join the chat at the above hours. Once you join, the mic will work in either "voice detection mode" or "press key mode". Default is voice detection. You talk, the mic turns on, and people hear you. The software (especially the installable software) is pretty good at keeping echo away, even if you are not wearing a headset. There is no video chat component to this application. (Picking a solution with no video option was an intentional choice, to make participants feel safer using it)

I'm not part of the SFT kakaotalk chat
No problemo. Message ice cream fairy!

Troubleshooting

Discord chat works on any computer browser with no installation. But if you have problems with sound quality, try installing the application, which is more stable. Link: Windows, Mac OS X

Using it on your smartphone? If you have the choice between a smartphone and computer, try the computer - less likely to crash/have bugs.

Copyright

A couple years ago we organized a major 200-person conference style event. I wanted to put up the materials on our website, but there was serious concern that this could tank attendance, as people would read the materials and not come to the conference.

I think the opposite is the case. People would read the materials, find it super interesting, understand that the event is not some BS event, and come to the conference to be part of this important discussion.

There are so many potential unique benefits that an in-person attendance to an event can provide. Networking, connecting with the presenters, sharing your perspectives, digging into logical gaps, asking for source materials, getting a feel of the room on a divisive opinion, etc.

I think even streaming an event live can help with attendance. If I was local to an event city, and was watching a conference via streaming, and found it to be super valuable, I would actually turn off the computer and come to the conference. I don’t go to conferences because I have attended enough and found most of them to be completely useless. Live streaming is one of the closest things to getting a feel of the event before the event takes place – I would totally go to one if I could see that participants actually know what they are talking about.

If an event has zero benefits to offer/lure live participants, from the many possible benefits, then that event really doesn’t deserve to be held as a live event. Just pre-record the thing, and distribute the video to subscribers/payees (if you have such a model) or release it on the internet.

In the KakaoTalk Korean/English exchange group, the idea of doing audio conversation practices came up, and we have been trying to work out times that worked out for everyone. We had participants from Korea, U.S./Canada, and England. We thought that this would be pretty simple, but at the crux of the problem is this phenomenon:

The more participants join from Korea, the more lively (and fruitful) for everyone it will be, since there will be more Korean language speaking, and also more to be gained from the English.

Best time for people in Korea is evening time (7pm-12am)

Turns out that during this time, people in the other two countries are either mostly sleeping (U.S. 3am-11am) or working (England 11am-4pm)

We could find two workable time periods for Saturdays, and squeeze out limited opportunities for weekday early morning or late evenings, but that’s about it.

Another interesting thing is that the bulk of participants are not in the U.S./Canada, and instead in England. The unfortunate thing is that England’s time and Korea’s time are very much not compatible. The way it has been turning out, Korea and England gaspingly scratch the edges of the normal day (midnight/early morning) between the two of them, and the western hemisphere sits very comfortably right in the middle of that arrangement, during the ideal golden time (6pm-9pm)

This finding runs counter to my experience calling Korea. Calling Korea has been actually pretty easy. Call them in the late afternoon from LA, and it’s morning there. What’s the difference?

Well, those calls were for work, so I could do them during the 9am-5pm window. Once the activity is for hobby, it is no longer possible to have them during work hours, and the window of opportunity narrows down significantly. Could we extend this thought to claim that the earth was (unfortunately) shaped to foster corporate global exchange across the Pacific, but not so much individual exchange/communications, and more acutely between Europe and the Far East?